Goudge, meanwhile, observed an additional complicating factor in his report on Ontario’s pediatric forensic pathology system. With scientific evidence becoming increasingly complicated, it has become more daunting for defence lawyers to challenge the flawed testimony of experts for the Crown. As a result, he recommends the Ontario government fund courses for both Crown and defence counsel so they can better act in cases involving pediatric forensic pathology.

LeSage and Code, too, note that training, education, and mentoring for lawyers are another important element in resolving the court delays they highlighted. “There is a role for law schools in teaching the students the practicalities [and] the fundamentals of conduct in a courtroom,” says LeSage. “The students are much better educated today than they were in my day. But what they do lack is a sort of fundamental experience in a courtroom.”

The consequence is what judges call a gap in knowledge of courtroom procedures among young lawyers, including the basic rules of decorum. But beyond formal education, the decline in legal aid funding is another source of the problem since it means senior lawyers are not only reluctant to accept serious cases, but in the ones they do take on they don’t have the money to retain young lawyers as junior counsel.

As a result, the people left to handle legal aid files don’t get the same type of on-the-job training, or mentoring, that they might have received in the past when they worked under more experienced counsel.

In Halifax, for example, Arnold says none of the big law firms he’s aware of have criminal law departments anymore, which means there are fewer opportunities for young criminal lawyers to work alongside the veterans. At the same time, Greenspon says the crisis in legal aid has had another consequence.

“The practice of having an articling student, again given legal aid rates, is something that’s been dramatically reduced over the years. When I started, just about every criminal law firm had an articling student. There are hardly any of them anymore because, quite frankly, on the legal aid cases you can’t afford to pay them.” The issue is one that also concerns LeSage. “Students don’t get the same courtroom exposure that many of us had when we were articling. We carried the senior’s bag, so to speak.”

To at least begin to address the gap, LeSage and Code recommended additional legal aid funding to allow senior lawyers to retain junior counsel. But so far, whether and when the Ontario government, or any other jurisdiction, will answer the long-standing concerns about legal aid is unclear.

Following the LeSage-Code report, Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley announced his government would place major-case Crown prosecutors into police departments — similar to a recommendation LeSage and Code made as a way of improving the pre-charge stage — but he shied away from any firm timelines on boosting the budget for legal aid.

In Halifax, Arnold isn’t optimistic that the repeated calls for more money to not only improve fairness to the accused but also to grease the wheels of the criminal process will lead to changes any time soon. “There’ll be a couple of disasters, and once those disasters happen, then people will start looking at it a little more closely,” he says.

Back in Ontario, meanwhile, Code is concerned about the prospects for action on legal aid. “We say that we’ve got to do all these things, that this is not the time for tinkering with the system and making a few changes. It really requires systematic, broad-based change to all the areas that we recommend.”

In fact, he and LeSage let no one off the hook, including the judges who, they say, have been too reluctant to push cases forward. “We say everybody bears responsibility for these problems. . . . Partly, they’re the responsibility of the courts and the legislature for law reform efforts that weren’t sensitive to the fact that they were making trials way too complex. They’re partly the fault of the judiciary for not being more forceful in managing these cases. They’re partly the fault of the law society for not disciplining unethical and unprofessional conduct. They’re partly the fault of legal aid for not overseeing it. They’re partly the fault of the bar for not mentoring young lawyers. They’re partly the fault of the Crown and police for not establishing efficient disclosure practices and efficient oversight. We think it’s very much a multi-faceted problem.”